early a 3rd of companies and 1 / 4 of charities have mentioned they had been the topic of cyber assaults or breaches final yr, new information has proven.
Figures collected for the Authorities by polling firm Ipsos present the same proportion of bigger and medium-sized corporations and high-income charities confronted assaults or breaches final yr as in 2021.
Nonetheless, there was a fall within the proportion of smaller companies who say they’ve recognized cyber breaches or assaults.
That is maybe as a result of smaller companies have been preoccupied by the worsening financial local weather and have positioned much less concentrate on their cybersecurity, the Division for Science, Innovation and Expertise mentioned.
Total, 32% of companies mentioned that they had been topic to assaults or breaches over a 12-month interval, with 24% of charities saying the identical. That is down from 39% and 30% respectively in 2021.
Nonetheless, these ranges had been a lot larger amongst medium-sized companies (59%), massive companies (69%) and charities which earn greater than £500,000 a yr (56%).
It comes as many main companies have been confronted with high-profile breaches within the final yr.
Royal Mail needed to restrict its companies for weeks after hackers locked its recordsdata and demanded 80 million {dollars} (£67 million) to unlock them once more.
WH Smith mentioned in March that hackers had accessed a few of its information in one other main incident whereas at the beginning of the yr JD Sports activities mentioned the e-mail addresses, telephone numbers and bodily addresses of about 10 million folks may need been stolen in one other assault.
The proportion of micro-sized companies which say that cybersecurity is a excessive precedence dropped from 80% to 69%. The division mentioned that’s as a result of these corporations are extra targeted on points like inflation.
In the meantime, about one in ten companies (11%) and eight% of charities mentioned that they had been the victims of cyber crime – which is outlined extra narrowly – over the 12-month interval.
This rose to 1 / 4 (26%) of medium-sized companies, 37% of enormous companies and 25% of high-income charities.
The Authorities estimated there had been 2.4 million cases of cyber crime in opposition to UK companies, costing a median of £15,300 per sufferer.
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